Heading south from Tlemcen, in northwest Algeria, the road climbs quickly, with hairpin turns; the views are magnificent. An occasional village clings to the slopes. Life here revolves around a scrap of land and a little livestock, and has barely changed in half a century. The only signs of modernity in this dry landscape are mobile phones, TV satellite dishes and the grey breezeblocks of new houses. Beni Bahdel, a village about 40km from Tlemcen, is known for its huge dam built by “the French”.

Abderrahmane Snoussi, 79, still makes a living from a few goats, which he pastures on the family land on the heights. Snoussi was a harki (Muslim Algerian auxiliary in the French army during the Algerian war) from 1959 to 1962, and for the first time, he’s agreed to talk to a journalist. “The French had a very big post here, with 800 men. My father had been in the second world war, and he was their interpreter. The FLN [National Liberation Front] killed him in 1955, when I was 19. Four years later, French soldiers came to my house. They took my wife and said I had to work for them or they would harm her. That’s how I became a harki.”

One of the French NCOs was Pierre Couette, a devout Catholic, who wrote to his parents describing the “humiliation” and “pointless oppression” of Algerians and the intelligence officers’ systematic use of torture (near-drowning and electric shocks). Did Snoussi see or take part in any torture? “No, never. My group was sent out on ambushes and searches. When we took a prisoner, we handed him over to intelligence. But I didn’t stay around.”On the day of the ceasefire (19 March 1962) the commanding officer told the harkis: “Anyone who wants to go to France can go. And anyone who wants to stay can stay.” Snoussi chose to stay. “All my family were here, my mother, my brother: I couldn’t leave them.”

When the French left, the freedom fighters came down from the mountains. “They took us to... an old French army barracks that the ALN [National Liberation Army, (...)